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Great article but stop with the, if we recruited at other campuses narrative. Elite employers are focused on getting the smartest kids. That’s the game.

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My intuition is not that too much power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of colleges, it is that to much real world power is concentrated in institutions centered around the financial business. The colleges are just their recruiting agencies. I also intuit that the second concentration is caused by the financial demands of the Federal Government.

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Thanks for this whole topic-

For anyone interested would suggest reading lauren rivera's book "pedigree"--

She actually embeds herself in a white shoe consulting firms HR Department.....my big takeaway was how, I guess inertia, had led these firms to have lots of process but no real critical approach to their hiring. They just outsourced 90% of their work to the Ivy League Admissions department and then picked the folks they wanted to have a beer with. Maybe this was no longer the case but it just really struck me that there is this assumption that the "top firms" are actually good at hiring when its not clear that they really know what they are doing

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First, congratulations on an interesting, timely, thorough, and provocative paper! It's had quite an impact in a short period of time. I appreciate your addressing the circular definition of "prestigious" firms. (Essentially: a "prestigious" firm is one that hires a lot of Ivy-plus graduates.) It is indeed circular. Unfortunately, such a definition obscures the significance of the claims about Ivy-plus graduates working at "prestigious" firms. Of course they do - that's how the term is defined! I understand and appreciate that you try address the problem in part by cross-referencing another potential measure of "prestige" - although I had never heard of "vault.com" before - but why not make the definition of the result independent of the variable you were analyzing? My first thought was cynical - that it would (literally "by definition!") show what the authors wanted - Ivy-plus graduates are more likely to work at "prestigious" firms. (Again: Of course they do - that's how "prestigious" is defined.) Upon reflection and trying to be more understanding and charitable - I wondered if you just had the Ivy-plus hiring data at hand, and it was easier to run that analysis than to find and incorporate independent measures of "prestige." Any additional insights you can share about that decision?

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